Drawbacks – If you have a niche event, you have better luck using Meetup as they have a larger reach

It’s less convenient th

an Bumble BFF as you have to read many posts to see which ones are in your area.

4. Facebook

Hidden in plain sight, you can use Facebook to find groups related to your interests. Even though we tend to see Facebook as a tool to interact with existing friends, it’s powerful for finding new friends since the user-base is so massive. Search for groups related to your interests in your area. Be active in these groups and interact with people. If you connect with someone, ask if they want to meet up in real life.

5. Yelp

You can use Yelp to make friends by seeking out and attending local events. There are officially organized Elite Events, but you need to have a subscription (or someone with a subscription who’s willing to bring you along as a guest) to attend those. There are also unofficial events which any user can take part in. In addition to this, there is a chat and a forum which you can use to connect with people.

6. Couchsurfing

Couchsurfing started off as a hospitality service where you can host people or “couch surf” for free when traveling. This has since grown into a community that has different types of meetups. Many people have detailed profiles, so it’s easy to meet many interesting people.

Why we think it’s good – Good for meeting many new people with different backgrounds. Hosting gives you a great opportunity to spend time with people you might not hang out with otherwise.

Drawbacks – It’s not a friendship-making app at its core, so most people don’t use it to build lifelong connections, but rather to have an experience. Hosting and surfing aren’t great for meeting people that you see regularly because of the traveling aspect. Local meetups that aren’t focused on the travelling aspect work a lot better for that. In addition to that, in the e accessible only to people who pay for a monthly or a yearly subscription, likely causing a drop in popularity.

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7. GirlfriendSocial

For women – Girlfriend social has the same target audience as Vina, but is a website rather than an app that looks dated. Try out Vina first.

8.

Interpals connects people who want to make friends and learn a new language at the same time. The app being buggy puts it further down on our list.

9. Active

For fitness-minded – You can find sports-activities close to you. It’s worthy to try it out – but when I’ve tried it, I’ve found few results and resorted to Meetup instead.

Other ways to make friends online

You can also make friends online by joining general online communities such as forums, servers, and messaging channels. These places aren’t designed specifically for making friends, but they can be just as effective for getting to know new people.

• Subreddits (That aren’t specifically for making friends but regarding any interest)
• Game servers
• Facebook interest groups

Apps and sites we don’t recommend

We cover the apps below for your reference, but we don’t recommend them because they either have too few users, are reported to not work, are focused on business networking or dating, or are reported to be used inappropriately.

1. Kik – Fairly popular, but has an overabundance of ads.